Since I stared to work as an independent coach, my inbox has been full of invitations for joining programs. They often promise me to “make 10K a month”, if I just buy their advice and follow their program. Needless to say, I do not buy into any of those, but they do provide me with an opportunity for reflection.
I had of course done some thinking about what I wanted to obtain with my coaching business, but in my process of setting goals and milestones, I had forgotten to investigate what it would mean for me to be successful in this new career. And there are some obvious success criteria within my goals: I.e., I want to be able to live from coaching, so when I earn enough money to do that, I have passed one criterion. But is that enough for me to feel I am successful?
Driving deeper into my feeling of what success means to me, I realized that money had very little to do with my feeling of success.
What makes me feel successful is:
- When a coachee tells me that I change something for them. Because that is why I coach, I want to help my coachee to gain insight on their topic for the coaching.
- When one of my blog posts makes people leave a comment, telling me that what I shared spoke to them.
- When I get a positive testimonial back after ending a coaching process.
- When I use a new idea, tool, method or approach that I came up with in a coaching session and it to do something for my coachee.
Making this refection, made it clear for me that my success criteria are very aligned with my values and why I chose to become a coach, when I changed career. It is the value that I can support people in their personal development and my success criteria for successful, is their confirmation, that I did that. And that can the money I earn not confirm for me.
Have you found out, what it means to you to be successful in your career?